Seth Rogen says he proposed to his girlfriend while she was topless, in the closet. We can't always choose how these things happen.

Advertisement

Said Rogen, on Conan,

She was in our closet changing, and she was literally only in her underpants, and her boobs were out," he said. "I'd already kind of started, and I was like 'Oh man, her boobs are out! That's not part of the plan!' I didn't picture it like this, and I know she didn't picture it like this. No little girl is like 'It'll happen in a closet with my t**s out.'

We're sure she's happy to have everyone know that. But the truth is, even those of us who didn't devote our childhoods to imagining the proposal can be taken aback by, ahem, underwhelming circumstances. A friend of mine was proposed to unexpectedly with her boyfriend's high-school class ring. While he had an ironic mustache. Let's just say shaving it was a condition of acceptance. My fianceThe gentleman is now clean-shaven.

We're living in a weird time: on the one hand, reality shows extol proposals of such elaborate preposterousness that no normal couple can compete. On the other hand, most of the people I know — those who didn't just talk it out, that is — got engaged under circumstances that were casual, to say the least. For those of us who consider the engagement ritual an anachronism (but still secretly kind of like it) we're still working out a new template — which, as in Rogen's case, is generally personal and frequently idiosyncratic. (Or maybe this is the wave of the future.)